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Maybe I'm a zany (actually there's no question about it ) but you could say that a ton of books 'prove' a conspiracy. Neither side can prove anything because you can make whatever viewpoint you want look correct when writing a book about this subject. For every piece of evidence that makes you lean one way, there's probably an equally compelling piece of evidence that can make you lean the other way.

EDIT: By the way, it's a wonderful review of what sounds like a very interesting book.

1.) Oswald's rifle is found in the Book Depository Building (from where shots came).

2.) Bullet fragments from Oswald's gun are found in the car where JFK died.

3.) Bullet shells from Oswald's gun are found under the window from where an "Oswald-like" fellow was seen firing a rifle.

4.) Oswald kills a Dallas policeman less than an hour after JFK was shot from directly in front of the building where the policeman's killer worked (and from where the policeman's killer's rifle was found and from where the policeman's killer fled within three minutes of the President being shot).

Now....I need to know what "equally compelling piece[s] of evidence" can possibly make me "lean the other way" (i.e., away from the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a double-killer) when assessing the 4 points of evidence listed above.

David,
If the answer was so straight forward, why did the author need 21 years and 1.5 million words to come to his answer? The whole truth of the matter will never be known since all the parties involved are now dead.
J

Only a conspiracy theorist would twist 21 years and 1.5 million words of research into a negative towards winning a debate. Maybe, just maybe, it took 21 years and 1.5 million words because of the sheer volume of stupidity in the crackpots he is trying to rebut. As far as the "parties involved are all dead" scenario, I'm sure Mr. Bugliosi has access to sworn statements and interview notes - you know, that "hard evidence" stuff.

Yep! If he had spent, say, two years on it and written 150,000 words, people like Justin would say "I dismiss this book because Bugliosi didn't cover this aspect or address that conspiracy". The exhaustiveness of the book is what makes it so effective in destroying the multiplicity of conspiracy theories, and no amount of "don't confuse me with lots of facts" spinning by a conspiracy theorist changes that.

Because of what the conspiracy theorists have done to the case for over 43 years....that's why. Or, to quote V. Bugliosi (yes, yet again )........

"The reason this book is so long, you ask? Well, there are really two realities in this case. The first is: This is really a very simple case...at its core. Oswald did it and did it alone. And that's a reality that continues to this very day.

"But there's a second reality here....and that is that the conspiracy theorists have turned this simple case into its present form, and that form is that this case is now the most complicated murder case, by far, in world history. Nothing comes even remotely close to it. And that's why this book is so long, as I took on all these conspiracy theories one by one." -- Vincent T. Bugliosi; May 2007 (paraphrased quotation)

=========================================

Here are two links to a very interesting 06/22/07 two-part radio interview with Vince Bugliosi from WOR-Radio (all about VB's book and the shameless way that conspiracy-lovers have manipulated the way most people think about the JFK murder)(81 minutes total):

Robert, not so sure what your comment "people like Justin" refers to, but I don't appreciate it. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but was only commenting on the simplicity of the case the David made, which is obviously anything but the truth based on this tome of writing.

You are assuming that simple truths must have simple explanations. When faced with the daunting task of first explaning everything that is not true, a simple explanation is impossible, no matter how simple the truth.

PS - As an aside, do you think Lee Harvey Oswald, working alone, killed Kennedy?

I think David is saying that the Kennedy assassination is a simple case, it's the conspiracy theorists who have tried to make it complicated. If it wasn't for them, Bugliosi would hardly have found it necessary to spend so much time and effort refuting them (and I applaud him for doing so, instead of leaving their nonsense unchallenged).

As a practcal matter, the bubbletop might have made a difference even if Oswald hadn't been detterred from firing, because passing through the plastic could have slowed, deformed or deflected the bullets in unpredictable ways. As you note above, one of the most likely theories concerning Oswald's missed shot is that it struck a glancing blow to a tree branch that stripped its copper jacket off and sent the core and jacket off on trajectories at a tangent to the original trajectory. With the bubbletop in place anything could have happened from Kennedy being killed outright by the first bullet that hit him, to Jackie or Mrs. Connelly being wounded to no one being hurt at all. Or the bullets might have drilled straight through the plastic, melting it as they went, and not been deflected or altered at all.

All of this is moot, of course, since as far as I know it was Kennedy's decision to leave the bubbletop (which he generally disliked) off because there was little chance of rain and it was really only used to keep the occupants of the limo dry. (And because it was hot in Dallas and the bubbletop made the car even hotter.)

This is just one of those contingent things where the free will of the actors shapes events, rather than the workings of some plot. The Oswald sweater incident is another. Even if someone else suggested that Oswald put on something warmer, Oswald still could have said "No" and avoided the delay that brought him face-to-face with Ruby for those few critical seconds. Hard to explain unless he was part of the conspiracy to kill himself.

The kind of thinking that ignores genuine lapses of logic like that one, while investing the tiniest discrepancy in eye-witness reports with huge signficance, is also seen in the Princess Diana "case". A car crash is a lousy way to kill somebody unless you can arrange to have the car go off a cliff or be flattened by a train, a semi or a bulldozer. Otherwise a car crash is just too unpredictable in its effects.

As it is two of the four occupants of the car were alive when they reached the hospital, one of whom was the second closest to the point of impact. He was the security guard, who had the least serious injuries and was - surprise, surprise - the only one of the four wearing a seatbelt. If Dodi and Diana had been wearing seatbelts, they probably would have been barely injured at all. And if the accident had happened in America instead of France, Diana still might have lived. (American emergnecy medical practice in a case like hers is to transport as quickly as possible to a trauma center. The French, at least in those days, still adhered to the older emergency standard of trying to stabilize the patient at the scene before risking transport. Studies have shown the American approach to produce far better survival rates, the advantages of reaching a fully trained trauma and surgical team far outweighing the risks of transport. Reports indicate that Diana probably lost too much blood while the French EMTs worked to stabilize her at the scene for her to survive surgery once she finally reached a hospital. In a major U.S. city she would have been on an operating table within maybe 30 minutes of the arrival of the paramedics.)

So Diana was killed by a combination of her own refusal to take the most elementary saftey precaution for any auto passenger and the French medical establishment's insistance on clingning to an outmoded emergency medical doctrine. The crash itself was obviously survivable and her injuries very likley so. Yet somehow this gets spun into a conspricacy by people with an aversion to physical evidence and common sense. The same "thinking" is at work here as in the JFK case - and most other conspiracy theories, when you stop to llook at them. It is like they all have the same intellectual DNA, use the same methods, accept the same underlying premises of both grandiosity and paranoia. (I'm the only one smart enough to detect this huge plot, which has to involve many thousands of people, most of whom have different agendas than their supposed partners, none of whom has ever talked or left a diary to be opened after his death, or gone on record in any other way.)

Re: The "mysterious deaths". Since the tentacles of the conspiracy are everywhere, how is it that Rush to Judgment and the 12 million subsequent conspiracy books ever got publsihed at all?. Why didn't the CIA or the FBI or the Mob simply stop publication or bump Mark Lane (then an obscure New York lawyer whom few would have missed) off? How come all these people did their "research", conducted their interviews, published their works and collected their money (sometimes millions of dollars) without being done away with by the dastardly plot which - according to their own accounts - has continued through nealry 44 years and seven subsequent presidential administrations of both parties and a wide range of ideological complexion? Why were peripheral figures - whose only "connection" to the case was that they were related to someone who was in Dealy Plaza that day, or that they lived in Dallas before or after the murders - apparently slaughtered wholesale over a period of decades, while people like Ruth Paine, Marina and Marguaritte Oswald were left alive to do interview after (ever-changing) interview for nearly as long?

These things are essentially self-refuting, because if the conspiracies were as omnipotent as they would have to be to pull off the crime and the on-going cover-up (over centuries or millenennia in the case of the various theories concerning groups liek the Jews and the Knights Templar) they would by definition be powerful enough to prevent anyone from exposing them in a commercial best-seller, TV show or feature film.

Regards,

Joe

P.S.

This is a wonderul and comprehensive page, but I really think you should change some of the pictures, and espeically the animations, to links. There is just so much stuff on the page that it takes forever to load, even with a fast DSL connection (and a T-1 at work), and that animations/videos cause a lag in the screen updates that really make typing a reply here painful.

And thanks for your interesting comments, too, re. the "Mystery Deaths" craziness. The next "Mystery Death" on Jim Marrs' list will probably be Lady Bird Johnson. She was only 94 you know, and since it's only been about 44 years since the assassination, you never know when she could have started "talking".

Yes, this review is photo-heavy. But I like it this way. Some of the above photos are quite rare (in the sense they aren't published in any JFK-related books that I'm aware of...or at least very few anyway).

It's funny, too, that you said the page takes a long time to load....I don't have that trouble on my computer at all (via a fast Broadband connection, granted). But it seems to load ultra-fast on my machine, which actually surprised me. Takes less than 5 seconds to fully load on my system. (Maybe you ought to get a Dell.)